Page 60 of The Paris Agent
The jump went perfectly—my first contact with the earth smooth and steady, until all of a sudden, my ankle just gave way. In a miserable re-enactment of the jump that went so badly wrong during my training, I was dragged along behind the chute, clutching desperately at the grass trying to slow myself. When I finally came to a stop, I lay limp against the earth, trying to catch my bearings. I released myself from the parachute as I twisted to sit up, only to find that just touching the bottom of my shoe to the ground was enough to spark a pain so intense, I barely noticed heavy footsteps on the ground as a man approached me.
“I’m Marcel,” he said uncertainly. “That was quite a landing. Are you hurt?”
“My ankle,” I whimpered, reaching to gingerly touch it through my flight suit.
“The safe house isn’t far from here but we will have to walk,” he said hesitantly.
I didn’t feel up to walking anywhere, but I realized the alternative was probably lying on the field until the Germans found me. There was a flurry of movement to my right, and then Remy landed gracefully nearby.
“If you two can bury the parachutes,” I muttered, “I’ll try to figure out how to walk.”
The safe house was a little over a mile from the drop zone, but I knew from my first step that it was going to be the longest hike of my life. My ankle couldn’t support my weight, so I had to drag myself across the French countryside, hopping on one foot and leaning on a stick Remy found for me. He and Marcel were walking behind me, carrying our cases.
“Can I help you?” Marcel asked uncertainly, after a while.
“No thank you,” I said stiffly. I hated to ask for help even at the best of times, but I didnotwant to appear weak in front of these men I was now to serve so closely with. I was busy trying not to panic. It took weeks for my ankle to feel strong again last time. What would I do if this injury was just as slow to heal?
“You have to cycle a long way tomorrow,” he said, after a while.
“Almost sixty miles from here,” Remy reminded us.
“I’m aware,” I said, but even though I couldn’t see his face in the dark, I sensed Marcel flinch at my flat tone. It would do me no good to offend my new circuit leader before we even started working together. “I’m sorry. This is an old injury and I don’t know what I’ll do if I’ve aggravated it badly again.”
“We will figure it out,” he assured me gently, then he offered again, a little more insistently this time, “Try leaning on me. We have to keep moving but you don’t have to do this on your own.”
Reluctantly, I wound my arm around his waist and he mirrored the posture, then we began to shuffle forward together along the track through a thatch of trees.
At the safe house, Marcel prepared some food for us while Remy washed up. I gritted my teeth as I eased my boot off my ankle, heart sinking as I saw the extensive swelling beginning to bloom around the joint, the skin already mottled purple and red.
“There’s no way you’ll be walking on that tomorrow, let alone cycling such a long way,” Marcel remarked, setting down a plate of bread and cheese beside me on the sofa.
“Perhaps,” I said. He walked back to the kitchen and returned with a glass of wine, which he handed me.
“For pain relief,” he offered. I took it greedily, hoping the alcohol might silence the voices of doom and gloom in my mind. “Don’t worry. Worst-case scenario, we signal London and ask for an evacuation—”
“No,” I said, sitting up immediately. Marcel leaned forward in his chair opposite me.
“I don’t want to do it,” he said firmly. “But we have to be realistic.”
“Even if you send me home, you won’t get another agent right away. I have a lot to get home to, but I have a job to do first. I don’t intend to let this ridiculous injury stop me.”
“Sometimes things don’t happen as we expect in the field and we have to adapt. A few months ago, my circuit tried to coordinate the destruction of a large factory and the air raid went terribly wrong, but my previous courier had a real knack for lateral thinking. She came up with a much better way to achieve the same result, and safely too. That’s the kind of thinking we need for this situation.”
“That wasn’t Chloe, was it?” I asked hesitantly. Marcel’s eyes widened.
“It was!”
“I trained with her. I’m not surprised to hear she saved the day with a little creativity.”
“She told me she trained with another woman. She said you were the best agent she knew.”
“Well, I’m not much good to you now, am I?” I muttered.
“What would Chloe do right now?”
“Honestly? She’d pretend to cry and convince some burly man to carry her the whole way,” I said wryly. Marcel threw back his head and laughed.
“Good grief,” Remy said, wincing as he joined us in the living room and saw my ankle. “Well. What’s the plan?”
